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The Takeaway

A cornerstone of the White House’s new AI Action Plan is to remove regulatory barriers and streamline environmental permitting for the infrastructure needed to implement the Plan.

Overall Goals of the Plan

On July 23, 2025, the White House released its new AI Action Plan. The purpose of the Plan is clear from its opening sentence: “The United States is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence (AI).” To that end, it declares that “[t]he United States needs to innovate faster and more comprehensively than our competitors in the development and distribution of new AI technology across every field, and dismantle unnecessary regulatory barriers that hinder the private sector in doing so.”  

The Plan outlines three key pillars to achieve this goal:

• Accelerate AI Innovation
• Build American AI Infrastructure
• Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security

Environmental Regulations Highlighted in the Plan

Under Pillar II (Build American AI Infrastructure), the Plan states that AI “will require new infrastructure, such as factories to produce chips, data centers to run those chips, and new energy sources to power it all.” It argues that current environmental regulations and permitting processes significantly slow development of this infrastructure.

To address this, it recommends several policy actions, including the need to:

• Establish new Categorical Exclusions, or adopt Categorical Exclusions already established by other agencies, under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to cover data center-related actions that generally do not have a significant effect on the environment.
• Explore the need for a nationwide Clean Water Act Section 404 permit for data centers, and, if adopted, ensure that this permit does not require a Pre-Construction Notification and covers development sites consistent with the size of a modern AI data center.
• Expedite environmental permitting by streamlining or reducing regulations promulgated under the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), and other relevant related laws.
• Expand efforts to apply AI to accelerate and improve environmental reviews.

These goals align with recent remarks by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin. In a July 17, 2025, press release, he emphasized the need for the EPA to increase certainty in the permitting process, calling it crucial for meeting the power demands of new data centers and related facilities.

Earlier this year, Zeldin named environmental permitting reform, in addition to artificial intelligence advancement, as one of the EPA’s five priorities. He stated that businesses should be able to invest in doing business in the U.S. without facing a lengthy, uncertain, and costly permitting process. (See our blog post of February 4, 2025, for a complete list of the five Pillars.) He stressed the importance of EPA’s collaboration with state and federal partners to ensure project approvals. Streamlining permitting, he added, supports both environmental protection and economic growth by encouraging investment and creating American jobs.

Need help navigating the environmental permitting process? HeplerBroom’s Environmental Team can help you navigate the complex maze of air, land, and water regulations at every phase of your project.